Israeli history photo of the week: The Golden Gate

JPost special feature: A Library of Congress collection of photographs that document Israel before the creation of the state.

The Library of Congress has recently digitalized a collection of over 10,000 photographs, taken by the "American Colony" in Jerusalem, a group of Christian utopians who lived in Jerusalem between 1881 and the 1940s. The photographers returned to the US, and bequeathed their massive collection to the Library of Congress in 1978. The collection includes Winston Churchill's visit to Jerusalem, Jewish expulsions from the Old City during Arab riots, and the building of Tel Aviv.

The Golden Gate (Sha'ar Harachamim, Gate of Mercy) of Jerusalem's Old City wall has special significance on Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement.) If the gate were opened, it would lead directly onto the Temple Plaza. The outside of the gate would open to the Kidron Valley and the Mount of Olives beyond. In Talmudic literature the gate was also known as the Shushan Gate because of its eastern direction (toward the Persian city of Shushan) and perhaps because of the role played by the Persian leader Cyrus in the Jews' return to Jerusalem after the Babylonian exile. ﻿

According to Jewish tradition, on Yom Kippur a messenger (usually a
priest) took the sacrificial lamb from the Temple through the gate to
the desert. The Red Heifer purification ceremony also involved taking
the sacrifice through the eastern gate to the Mount of Olives.

Unlike most of Jerusalem's other gates, the Golden Gate was originally
built at least a millennium before Suleiman the Magnificent rebuilt the
walls of Jerusalem in 1540. Indeed, some archeologists believe that the
original gate, dating back to Herod's construction or even Nehemiah's
period (440 BCE), still exists beneath the current gate. Perhaps because
of the great religious significance of the gate to Jews and Christians
as the Messiah's route into Jerusalem, it is believed Suleiman sealed
the gate and permitted the construction of a Muslim cemetery in front of
the gate.

Hebrew writing on the internal walls of the gate's chamber is believed
to have been left by Jewish pilgrims at least 1,000 years ago.

The theory of an ancient gate received support in 1969 when an
archeological student named James Fleming was inspecting the current
gate. Suddenly the rain-soaked ground beneath him opened and he found
himself in a pit of bones looking at the top of another gate eight feet
beneath the surface. Fleming photographed his discovery. When he
returned the next day, the tomb had been sealed with a cement slab by
the Islamic custodians of the cemetery.